1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a relay apparatus, a method of controlling content delivery and a content delivery system, in which a mobile terminal and the relay apparatus are connected to a radio network including a RAN (Radio Access Network). A content server which delivering various contents to the mobile terminal is located on a private network, is connected to the relay apparatus, and delivers the contents to the mobile terminal via the relay apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system has hitherto been proposed, in which a mobile terminal receives a content of interest via a network from a content server managing various contents (for example, see Patent Literature 1). In a system including a base transceiver station (Node B) and a base station controller (RNC) which is compliant with 3GPP standards as a mode of RAN, a mobile terminal needs to receive delivery of a content of interest from a content server always via a core network.
Patent Literature 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-265689 (claims 4 to 6, FIG. 1)
However, in this system, when an operator installing a RAN independently sets a content server to provide services, the operator needs to have a network operator having a core network make settings to allow connection of the content server to the core network. Therefore, it took much time and labor for the operator to complete the above system.
In the above system, a mobile terminal is required to receive a content of interest from the content server always via the core network. Accordingly, the operator could not provide a service of delivering original contents, not via the core network, to a mobile terminal just being connected to a RAN (especially, RAN compliant with 3GPP) that is not connected to the core network.
Furthermore, data sent and received between a mobile terminal and the content server is always routed through the core network similarly to data sent and received between the mobile terminal and a general content server connected to the Internet. Therefore, when the mobile terminal receives data of interest from the above content server, a user thereof must pay a certain fee according to an amount of delivered data.